Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

25 December 2021

This film picks right up after Spider-Man's defeat of Mysterio in the second film. With that defeat, Mysterio left a bombshell in Parker's life that impacts his family and friends, so he goes to Doctor Strange to try to fix it. Because of meddling in magic, Parker opens up the multiverse and that's where this story shines. Some light spoilers from here, if you're going in blind.

The original villains (Willem DaFoe as Green Goblin, Alfred Molina as Doc Ock) are great actors reprising their great characters - I loved seeing more of them, and additional depth to their characters, because they are fantastic actors. That said, the problem with an all-star cast is that it can spread the story thin, and though I think it'll hold up better over time than any Avengers film, it suffers a little from its spider-density (I didn't see Amazing Spider-Man so that villain history is lost on me, for instance). Overall this film rewards knowing canon, but parts of this film also feel overly contrived in the interest of the plot.

Ignoring little things, it's a solid film, but as superhero/multiverse films go Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) remains the frontrunner. 8/10